Tagged: Russia

FBI Director James Comey is taking heat for a speech he gave, reprinted in the Washington Post, that blamed Poland for the Holocaust as well as Germany. Polish officials condemned him and summoned the American ambassador to apologize. However, the scandal should be over the lack over the Polish officials’...

Some months ago, I found a 1977 book published by the National Geographic Society: Journey Across Russia: The Soviet Union Today. A writer (Bart McDowell) and a photographer (Dean Conger) covered 30,000 miles, visited 50 cities and towns, and the 15 constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. It’s an admirable effort that...

Russia exists on a level alongside the United States, India, and China. It is a culture, a history, a nation that surpasses the individual and escapes comprehension. The contradictions will stand, and fate demands a surrender to a postcard, a snapshot with a few words to satisfy curiosity. Take that...

Why do smart people support dictators? Usually, they don’t defend a murderer, and probably oppose wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or drone strikes in Pakistan. Yet, when a foreign leader opposes “American imperialism” or upholds a socialist vision, all is forgiven. Who needs freedom of speech, a bourgeois virtue that...

During the 1970s, the City University of New York broadcast Day at Night, wherein James Day interviewed various individuals influential in politics or culture. In 1974, he interviewed I.F. Stone and they discussed Stone’s views on free speech, journalistic independence, tolerance, his motivations for starting his Weekly Reader, and his beginnings in journalism....